Fonseca

DECANTING PORT

Tawny Ports and full bodied, fruity Ports such as Fonseca BIN 27 do not require decanting, since they have been aged in cask or large wooden vats and filtered before bottling to remove any of the natural sediment there may have been in the wine. Simply open and these Port wines are ready for pouring.

Vintage Ports, on the other hand, only spend 2 years in wood before being bottled, unfiltered. Over time as the Vintage Port ages, the natural sediment in the wine will settle in the bottle, requiring that any Vintage Port be decanted prior to serving to remove this deposit.

Two Fonseca Port wines that have been aged for longer periods in wood, are Fonseca Late Bottled Vintage Unfiltered and Fonseca Crusted. Both Port wines are bottled without being filtered and will 'throw' a very light deposit. So light is the deposit in the Late Bottled Vintage, that decanting is not necessary, but the Fonseca Crusted Port would certainly benefit from being being decanted, as the deposit will be more evident.

HOW TO DECANT PORT WINE

If your chosen bottle of Port has been moved recently, ensure that you stand the bottle upright for several hours before decanting. This will help the sediment in the wine to settle a little and will make the decanting of the Port easier.

Before you start, have a clean decanter at the ready. Alternatively, you could also use a clean empty bottle or a jug. Without shaking the bottle too much, remove the cork seal around the neck of the bottle, wipe off any dust that may have accrued and carefully insert the corkscrew. Depending on the age of the Vintage, the cork may have been in the bottle for many years, so it is important to treat it with care and pull gently from the bottle, so as not to snap the cork.

Slowly pour the Port into the decanter, gently raising your arm so as not to agitate the sediment in the bottle. A funnel can be useful at this point, although not entirely necessary, and particularly with older bottles of Vintage Port which will naturally have more sediment, a small piece of muslin cloth can help to catch any deposit from entering your decanter.

Since the emergence of Vintage Port as a great classic wine in the first half of the 19th century, Fonseca has been one of its most admired and consistent producers.

The release of the legendary 1840, the first Vintage Port sold under the Fonseca name, marked the start of a steady stream of magnificent vintages which continues to this day. It has included such icons as the Fonseca 1868 and the extraordinary 1927, 1948, 1977 and 1994, all four of them 100-point wines. As Robert Parker wrote in The Wine Buyer's Guide, 'Fonseca is one of the great port lodges, producing the most exotic and most complex port. With its lush, seductive character, one might call it the Pomerol of Vintage ports.' James Suckling, in his authoritative book on Vintage Port, put it as follows: 'The vintage Ports of Fonseca are perhaps the most consistently great of them all. Not only do they have a striking fleshiness and powerful richness when young, but they retain that youthfulness for decades.' Four families have shaped the company's destiny since its foundation in 1815.

The story begins with the Fonsecas and Monteiros, the original founders of the business. Then came the Guimaraens family who led the firm for over a century and first established its reputation as a 'first growth' Vintage Port house. And finally the Yeatmans and their descendants who steered the company successfully through the second half of the 20th century and into the new millennium. While for the collector or connoisseur, Fonseca may be synonymous with Vintage Port, to many wine lovers around the world it is best known as the producer of Bin No.27, one of the most popular Ports ever made. 

Fonseca today is part of the Fladgate Partnership, made up of three of the most historic and highly regarded Porto houses: Taylor Fladgate, Fonseca, and Croft. Their Portos are produced with the attention to quality that is the standard to which all other Port wine houses aspire. It is a family-run company with the present members representing the eighth generation of the Yeatman family, originally from the Port house of Taylor Fladgate & Yeatman, now with more than 300 years of history. The group owns several of the best-known wine estates in the Douro Valley—including the famous Quinta de Vargellas and Quinta do Panascal—totalling more than 290 hectares of A-classified vineyard. It also has interests in tourism and catering.

Over the years, Fonseca's determination to preserve and refine its distinctive house style has drawn it ever closer to the vineyard. The last three decades of the 20th century saw it invest in vineyard ownership and take a leading role in vineyard renovation in the Douro Valley. Fonseca's three estates, Panascal, Cruzeiro and Santo António, with their distinctive terroirs, have a key role in defining the unmistakable character of the firm's wines. Fonseca also became a pioneer of organic and sustainable viticulture, helping to conserve the unique ecosystem and landscape of the valley for future generations. As it approaches its bicentenary, Fonseca can take pride in its past and look forward to the future with confidence.

Wine drinkers increasingly seek wines of authenticity and character with a genuine story to tell and made by creative winemakers who understand their terroir and respect the environment. The wine critic James Suckling, author of the most comprehensive book on Vintage Port written to date, once described Fonseca as 'the Bentley' of Vintage Port, meaning the producer of wines for the connoisseur and enthusiast. Like the famous luxury cars, Fonseca Vintage Ports are thoroughbreds, the result of craftsmanship and skill, but also of passion and creativity. As it has since the mid-19th century, Fonseca continues to be defined by its position as one of a very small handful of top Vintage Port houses, a producer of wines by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

The two Pinhão Valley estates of Quinta do Cruzeiro and Quinta de Santo António, have supplied Fonseca for over a hundred years.  Quinta do Panascal in the Távora Valley has a more recent association with Fonseca, but its wines perfectly complement those of the two Pinhão Valley properties as well as producing an exceptional single-quinta Vintage Port made exclusively from grapes grown on the estate.

The unique terroir of each quinta contributes its own distinctive character to the Fonseca Vintage Port blend.  Cruzeiro provides the dense core of black fruit and tannin. This is enveloped in the rich succulent jammy flavours and velvety texture of the wines of Panascal and overlaid by the exotic heady scents of Santo António. The fusion of the wines of these three diverse properties explains the multi-layered and multi-dimensional quality of Fonseca Vintage Ports and their ability to continue releasing surges of opulent complex aroma over decades of ageing in bottle.

Fonseca's estates have also witnessed pioneering developments in organic and sustainable viticulture in the Douro Valley. Quinta do Panascal was one of the first properties in the valley to contain areas of vineyard with organic certification.  Quinta de Santo António has been completely converted to the prize-winning sustainable vineyard model developed by the firm's viticulture team and is certified for organic production of both grapes and olive oil.

Consistency of style has remained one of the fundamental principles of the Fonseca philosophy since its founding. The individuality and consistency of character of each Porto brand is dictated by numerous factors, most important of which are the style of the winemaker and the different sources of grapes used by each house.

Fonseca may be unique in the annals of Port in that every Fonseca Vintage Port, except the 1955, produced by Dorothy Guimaraens, was made by one of three persons: Frank Guimaraens, from the 1896 through the 1948 vintage; Bruce Duncan Guimaraens, great-great-grandson of the founder, who supervised Fonseca’s extensive vineyards in the Upper Douro from 1955 to 1995; and the current winemaker, Bruce’s son, David Guimaraens, who produced two 100-point wines in his first vintage. This remarkable continuity of winemaker is clearly evident in the wine.

LOWER YIELDS HAVE OFTEN BEEN A PORTENT OF A FINE HARVEST

As summer holidays draw to an end it is time to think about more imPORTant things like the harvest of 2011.

Our head viticulturalist, Antonio Magalhães, and our head winemaker, David Guimaraens have already spent a week visiting our farms and those of our suppliers to assess when picking should start. This has been a challenging year since the wet month of April that provoked widespread attacks of mildew. Once the mildew had passed by late May, the Douro has been in heat wave; the plant leaves looked autumnal already when I visited over the weekend. The combined effect of these factors, added to the fact that the berries are small this year, means that we are looking at a harvest which will be both early and small.

The rain yesterday evening in the Douro valley will help the grape ripening process on Fonseca's properties. This is very welcome and will help complete the ripening process. Vigilance will be required but the weather forecast looks good.

We expect to open our modern winery at Quinta de Nogueira on 29th August. Nogueira will handle the grapes coming from our grape supplier partners close to the Spanish border.

We expect to start picking our own grapes at Quinta de Cruzeiro at Vale de Mendiz on either the 16th or 19th of September.

Although this has been a dry year the small berry size means that we will have plenty of skins and ensure good colour and flavour. Lower yields have often been a portent of a fine harvest. We are at that delicate moment however when just enough rain really helps the process but too much is, well, too much.

Our fingers are crossed and our thoughts optimistic.